


Smokes

by Quitebrilliantindeed



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Gen, Let Rose Say Fuck, MGS4, Vague References to Suicide, weird friendships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-29
Updated: 2016-01-29
Packaged: 2018-05-16 22:59:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5844277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quitebrilliantindeed/pseuds/Quitebrilliantindeed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose needs to talk to Snake. Snake is Snake. Rose is Rose. Jack is an Idiot. (Post-Outer Haven.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smokes

**Author's Note:**

> This was written around a nonsensical image that popped into my head. It didn't make sense-- so I made it make sense. (Or tried.)

In the weeks following the fall of SOP, time seemed to do a peculiar thing. As if making up for five lost years, it seemed to move five times as fast. It had been three weeks since Outer Haven—yet most anyone would tell you it felt more like three days.

Rosemary was no exception. It surprised her to hear that Snake—David—had already been released. Medicine was good—but not _that_ good. The moment it took for her to remember how long it had actually been—well, she was almost ashamed of herself for the delay.

…And ashamed that she had wound up at this secluded little hospital, fifteen minutes late. Rosemary wasn’t the most _organized_ person, but she wasn’t bad enough to fail in planning for something simple as this. She’d have to catch him later—probably at Roy’s house—her, no, former— house. With a tight lipped grimace she shook her head, fast walking through the automatic doors, and jamming her hands into trench coat pockets.

She had grown accustomed to following certain sets of rules in this latest role—even the small ones, seemingly insignificant, like sticking to paved paths. But this role was ending, and with it, those acquired mannerisms. She wrapped her coat tighter, and stepped off the path, half-jogging down into the grassy depression beside it. Just a faster route back to her car—at last, free of pretense. If anyone was around, they’d probably wonder why she was smiling.

But someone _was_ around. She only saw him as she slowed to walk—a black and grey figure, leaning against brick wall, nearly blending in against it, despite the differences in color. She snorted out an honest, if stuttering, laugh, and called to him.

“Snake.”

He looked up. A cigarette hung loosely from his mouth, lighter in one hand, other in his pocket. He was, dressed nicely otherwise, hair combed, shoes polished, like some kind of wealthy old entrepreneur, not a recent patient.

It made her a little sad.

Snake—David—Snake—made a face, lip curling around the cigarette. He plucked it from his mouth with an irritating sort of grin, and nodded his head. “Rosemary.” He said her name like an acknowledgement more so than a greeting, but that was par for the course. Unperturbed, she still shifted her path to meet him, coming to a stop some feet from his side.

Any elegance was quickly damned by a cold wind, rhythmically stirring up the air, making her coat flap with irritating noise, and hair blow into her eyes. Yet Snake somehow seemed untouched by it. Such an anomaly didn’t so much anger her as it did upset her. She was hit with a supposition that by now, he was barely a real person anyway. His body had faded away, leaving behind not a phantom, but an amalgamation of stories and experiences.

A war ghost.

It was quiet until the wind died down. New friends, old friends, war buddies—she wasn’t sure what to call them, but the silence carried no tension. They stood, eyes apart, heads upturned, waiting for the right words to come.

Snake ended it when he pulled a carton from his pocket, and held it out to her.

“Smoke?”

Rosemary stared. He met her eyes, earnest in his offer, almost sarcastically proud of this grand generosity. She stiffened her own look into a playful scorn, to which he finally lowered his hand.

“Ah. Right. You don’t smoke.” He growled his words, almost disappointed. She guessed that was the only effective icebreaker he knew.

“Mmm,” She laughed heartily, but found her gaze suddenly fixed on the grass and dirt below. Jack used to smoke—back when they first… _met_ , if she could even call it that. She thought he looked strange with a cigarette—like some kind of 1940s pinup girl. Pretty and clean, a little cool, definitely sexy—but with that ugly tobacco stench drifting on the smoke from his lips.

But he was halfway to quitting, back then, back when they met. He always gave her credit for giving him the final push.

Rose nodded when she spoke, emphatic in her refusal. “Nope. I’m not a fan.”

Snake grunted with his usual rigid brand of indignity, and turned— “Well then. Suit yourself.”

Rosemary didn’t look, but she still heard the shuffle of his coat, and bit on her lip, a strange feeling coming over her stomach. No words to explain it, no knowledge in all her years of study she could apply—just a simple gut feeling. So she caved, and raised her head—

“Wait,” She held out her hand and stepped closer, close enough to see even the smallest lines on his wilting face. “Actually…I— I’ll take one.” _What the fuck, Rosemary._

Snake grunted again—this time with something more akin to disbelief. “You’re… not gonna like it,” He grumbled, offering her the cigarette. She smiled dully.

“Truthfully, I smoked a little in high school.” She took it from Snake’s fingers into her own. She wasn’t lying. “It was cool at the time, I suppose… Dumb kids will do anything, _especially_ if they’re me.” She smirked, with just a twitch of bitterness, and brought the cigarette to her mouth.

“Well then. Don’t blame me if you hack up a lung.”

“I won’t.” She meant it both ways.

Snake relented. He produced the lighter, motioning for her. She leaned in, hand cupped around the end to shield it from the intermittent gusts stirring past her feet. It took a few tries—the thing must have been older than Snake was—but it eventually took to the flame. Rose straightened her back, tossing the hair from her eyes, and drew in a long, heavy breath. She never really liked the feeling—it burned, and made her drowsy—but the smoke in her mouth and lungs somehow felt right for just this one instance.

 _“Never doing that again,”_ She thought, eyes drifting back open as she blew the smoke from pursed lips, elbow resting on her waist. This was punishment, she figured—one last sentence.

Snake laughed with all the smoothness of sandpaper, probably at her. He still had that crooked cigarette in his mouth, but he had yet to light it. For once, Rosemary didn’t ask why. She didn’t need to.

“So,” Snake drew the word out into the next ones. “What brings you here?” He only asked after she had settled in to a few more drags—after so many calls made up of onesided lectures and headstrong bickering, it seemed comfortable silence was finally an option. “Love or war?”

“I don’t appreciate the bad jokes,” Rose smirked, taking the cigarette from her mouth. She held it up to dull light of the sky, watching the faint trails of smoke leave from it. They reminded her, oddly enough, of the man beside her. Probably out of association, she figured, but the resemblance was somehow uncanny.

“Wasn’t joking.”

 “Well, that’s nice, but I can’t actually _tell_ with you.” She lowered her arm, and turned back to face him. Then, she snorted lightly, half from amusement, half from the smoke. Damn, she had to keep that down. “Actually, I’m here for you.”

Snake harrumphed. She expected as much. “They tell you?”

“Roy told me.”

Flinching was her first instinct as Snake met her gaze. She held her ground, but the disappointment—she could see it plain as day in that face. Denial would tell her that it was his own privacy he was so pissed over, but any idiot could see how far from the truth that was.

But—he said nothing.

“Look, Snake,” What the hell was she supposed to say? She _really_ hadn’t been planning this time around—probably because she was spending all her thoughts on the _big one._ “I’ll cut to the chase. I…haven’t been entirely honest with you.”

Still, nothing.

“But I owe you it,” She ran her tongue over her lips as the wind picked up once more. She just had to start—the rest would come after that. “Not just because of all that’s happened, but because I’m—I’m afraid what will happen otherwise—” Breathing hard, and unable to stop it, she clenched a fist inside her pocket before finishing the thought. “—To Jack.”

And then, Rose watched him carefully—despite the body language, his face seemed to tell something far different. Intrigue? Concern? She had his attention, regardless. He took the cigarette from his teeth, holding the cold thing between his fingers, and stepped from the wall.

His eyes were distant, pointed at the pitiful excuse for a parking lot, or perhaps just beyond it, to the horizon. “That’s why you’re here?”

“More or less—yes.”

Snake sighed, long, and drawn out. It was hoarse, crippled with age and injury, all but dead from the inside out. For the first time, it hit her, beyond just ordinary sadness and pity. Snake was a good man. Snake was a friend. Snake was all but gone.

He gestured for her to go ahead, and speak.

So she did.

She told him everything—words and stories she hadn’t told in years. She told him how it went wrong—how they fought, how they screamed, how they were scared, how Jack left—and how that _hurt_. She told him her feelings and goals—the real ones—about the plan they hatched _the second_ she learned Jack was still alive. How she heard what had happened—no, what they had _done_ to him. About what that meant, and about her latest part, in that big, gross play she had been performing all her life.

Then she told him about John—and she told him what came next.

Snake didn’t say a word, but simply twiddled the cigarette between his fingers. Even when Rose stopped to take a drag from her own—there was nothing. (What did she expect? Snake wasn’t the man to have a heart-to-heart with.) And when she had finished, mouth dry, heart swollen, the silence crept up around them once more.

 “…Raiden’s here, you know.”

The cigarette was little more than a stump now, yet it remained between her fingers. Of course he’d jump right to that. “Yes…I do.” A creep of shame slithered in her throat—she’d forever be marked by this disgrace—a necessary sacrifice for the grand scheme of things.

“And?” Snake looked her in the eyes—it certainly had whatever effect he intended. She felt her whole body go rigid—the creep turned into a vice grip, announcing her misdeeds. “Just when are you going to see him?”

“Ah…” She swallowed. “Soon.” It was vague at best, and rather noncommittal. Rose knew that much, but it was no lie. Contrary to half her life choices, she _did_ actually stick to her word, at least when she really meant it. “I can’t do it yet, Snake. He’s still….resisting. You know that, I’m sure.”

“Ah. The new body?”

Rose nodded. The elephant in the room finally stomped its feet—Roy’s idea. A strangely optimistic one, for such a grim, militaristic, sort of man. A non-combat body—a symbol of this new life, free of all this fighting—an ideal that Jack _needed_ , yet doubtfully would understand. Hell, she had doubted it herself—but self-denial was something she had learned quite well. Besides, she wanted this. There was no reason not to agree.

Snake, however, just looked pensive—almost like he was mulling it over.

She swallowed, and continued.

“You…understand him. Better than anyone else I know… Maybe better than me. God, probably even better than he gets _himself_.” How fucking true that was— _too fucking true._ For a man so preoccupied with finding his own identity, he sure had a way of finding the exact wrong answers. "If you just—“

“Talked to him?”

Technically, he cut her off, but it sure didn’t feel that way.

“…He’d…listen.” She exhaled, slumping. Snake understood—yet she still felt defeated. “’Else I worry that he’ll just—“ She forced herself to breathe in, even if it shook her whole body. She didn’t want to say it—she had to divert. “—Just keep doing what he has been... regardless of me, or…anything else.”

Anything else being: a nearly-five-year old boy, sweet, perceptive, too rambunctious for his own good. Worst-case scenarios.

A second seemed to disappear in that pit of dread, eyes squeezed shut, senses all but lost to some black hole of emotion. She awoke with a start, Snake’s hands gripping her shoulders with a strength so firm and unexpected, that the cigarette dropped from her fingers. The initial terror made her heart race—but the look in Snake’s eyes seemed to halt it.

“Rose.” He was growling again—but the nostalgia was lost to the intensity. Like the scar around his eye—the one she had watched him receive.

“…What?” She sounded so angry—the word felt so disconnected from her mouth, intonation nonsensical and unintended.

She couldn’t meet his gaze this time.

“He’s taking it.”

Her brow furrowed.

“What?”

“I said he’s taking it. You’ll probably get a phonecall as soon as the Colonel hears it.” He gestured to her pocket, sharply tilting his head. “Keep an eye out.”

All she could manage was to think how badly she wanted to ask. How did he know? _Why_ did he know? She felt she knew the answer, and while it was enough to make her eyes water, she refrained from letting the actual question be heard.

Why that was—she’d never know.

Snake let go with all the gracefulness of the old soldier he was, all but pushing her over as he stepped back, face hard as always, hand slipping back into his pocket. “Don’t be afraid of him,” He grumbled with disdain. “There’s _nothing_ to be afraid of in that kid.”

He was right. There wasn't. There was just the man she fell for—sweet and simple, and so very, very, lost.

“I know,” She said. Maybe once, she didn’t, but that didn’t matter. Not now. “I was…no more afraid of him than he was of me.” Rose’s gaze fell upon the cigarette butt at her feet, now useless as any sort of punishment. Like a wild animal, she realized. They were more afraid of you than you were of them—war made her beauty into a beast, long before she could have ever known him.

She bent her knees, and picked the cigarette off the grass, not even bothering to look or linger as she tossed it to the trash bin.

Snake watched, stern, quiet, softly grunting. Same as always.

“He. Err. Raiden—” Snake coughed. The legend was just a person, ripe with flaws, just as the rest of them. Rose had found that out a long time ago. “—Loves you. It’s all I’ve heard out of him...” He trails off, almost to a whisper, with a fond sort of sourness, like Jack was some prodigal son of his. Half a laugh managed to jump from Rose’s mouth. She didn’t know why she’d do that, when it was the best thing she had heard in a very long time.

“That’s…just like him.” It really was. She just wished she had listened to the idea sooner—maybe it wouldn’t have changed anything, but blaming yourself was always an easy route to follow. Routes like that had to be abandoned now, as even the best case scenario would be a challenging one in its fledgling steps.

Snake was standing farther and farther away now, looking over his shoulder as if to announce his intentions. Fair enough—she’s made him feel awkward enough as it is.

“Oh—sorry,” It was an honest, if wry apology. There was no way in hell to have a simple conversation with this man—so she couldn't find the heart to regret her actions. “I won’t keep you.” Rose waved her hand and gave him a little smile. It felt stilted and awkward—an anticlimactic ending. “Go on ahead.”

“Huh.” The crooked cigarette was back in his mouth, just as his hands were back to his pockets. He listened. He turned from her completely, and began to walk, one hand in the air to signal his exit. Where to, she didn’t know. Somehow, she felt she didn’t _want_ to either.

“Thank you.” She called, almost like an afterthought. “…Thank you.”

He waved again. That was enough for her—no, more than enough. More than she had expected.


End file.
